Wednesday, October 31, 2007

A big idea of mine, was pretty simple. Buy stuff on ebay at a discount, and then resell it properly for a profit. It wasn't supposed to be a huge amount of money, but I had hoped it would make up another hundred or two for the month.

Here's how it would work: Many electronic products are hot sellers, but improperly named. Or, it just so happened to fall under the radar for no particular reason. So, I chose a product that regularly sells for a specified amount, minus the expected profit, shipping, ebay relisting and paypal fees, then I am left with a ceiling price I can pay to buy it with. In theory, as long as I get a good deal, I should have no problem making money at it.

So, my first sale I shot for a Friday Listing and had it run through Monday 12pm PST. I was quite shocked when I did not get one bid. I immediately relisted it at a lower price, and shot for a Thursday sale.

As it turned out, I had twice as many views Monday to Thursday as I did Friday to Monday. I attribute this to more people either getting paid on Thursday, or looking forward to blowing the Friday paycheck before it even arrives. Anyway, I had 4 bids and ended up making about $10.00 or something silly like that. After looking at expired bids, it seems Wednesday was a super shitty day to sell (but great day to buy!)

While technically, not the windfall I was hoping for, if you change perspective it wasn't that bad as a dollar for dollar investment. Think about it this way, with a $401.00 investment on the 15th, two weeks later I had a 2.5% return on my money. To further put it into perspective, if I left that money in a High Yield Savings account (where it came from) it would have taken me 6 months to make that same $10.00.

If I left that $401.00 in the savings account, a year later it would be worth $20.00 interest. It's easy to see where I could make that on one sale. But, even if I follow the same schedule for the rest of the year, that same $401.00 would bring in another $260.

Now, sure, by itself it's not worth it, but if I put together 3-4 deals like that a week, that's another $200 per month income. Yeah, I know, it's nothing great. I'll admit it, I had hoped for better. Now it seems another company is flooding the marketplace with what I was going to resell next week. Figures.